‘Gofor’ Imagines the Future of Personal Assistant Drones

Gofor provides drones on demand. Using our mobile app, you can task a drone to complete a variety of helpful tasks. “Uber, for drones”.

Drones are summoned much like taxis in other popular service apps. Your desired task is either noted at the outset using presets, or customized using voice commands. Once the drone arrives, your phone’s flashlight is used to pair your device with the drone. From there, it depends on the task, the object-based UI is very easy to understand.

Late last year, graphic artist Alex Cornell unveiled “Our Drone Future,” a creepy video that imagined a future where police drones persistently patrol San Francisco. It quickly went viral, but Cornell thought his work wasn’t finished—for one, he doesn’t think drones are necessarily creepy.

“I’m a huge fan of drones, I have tons of them, I fly them all the time,” Cornell told me. “It was weird that that’s was the only thing I had out there—this video with a dystopian, dark vibe. I wanted to look at a more consumer take on it, as well.”

Enter Gofor, a startup that will send personal assistant drones to you to help you find a parking spot, take selfies, beam you footage from across town, monitor your house, and walk with you late at night. The thing about Gofor, though, is that it’s not real. Cornell thought it’d be an interesting experiment to to design and pitch a startup, even though the technology isn’t quite there yet to make Gofor a reality. It’s kind of like one of those April Fools Jokes, except it’s not exactly designed to fool anyone—and personal assistant drones could actually be useful.